Rule machine - as per the app developer, this app is no longer available for new installs, distribution, or support

Hey @Mike_Maxwell did you see this? Is the puzzle of the day…What do you think?

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No freaking clue what that’s about…

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Same with me…everyone I recommended ST too, I told them to go and get Rule Machine right away. My house would not be anywhere near as automated as it is, without Rule Machine and the 53 rules that I have running it.

Thanks @bravenel for all of your work and dedication to this - you made ST have endless possibilities. Please let us know if you decide to do anything in the future with some other home automation - my money is invested in Zwave and ZigBee…I would be more than happy to follow you to another Zwave hub!

Mark

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AGREE 100% - Well Said!

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This right here can not be overstated. Bruce’s dedication to this was second to none, and it showed in the product.

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I understand why @bravenel has chosen to remove Rule Machine. I support Bruce’s decision. SmartThings is at a cross roads. They need to embrace community code entered into the IDE and support their customers properly or remove the IDE from normal users accounts.

Dedicating a few full time support people to help debug and work out coding issues and not blame or shame community code should be done ASAP.

There needs to be a proper marketplace and proper recognition for the community developers and remove the artificial walls of submitting apps in order to be supported.

A reputation based system should be used, and if it had been in place, Bruce’s Rule Machine would have been the most trusted most widely used app in such marketplace. Instead, its now gone and we have a huge hole in its place.

SmartThings needs to wake up and make changes ASAP to how they support end users and the IDE and stop blaming community code and start embracing it as the one thing that makes SmartThings better then the rest. Period, end of story.

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@pstuart I really enjoyed what you said on the last developer call about this very topic. For those who are interested it’s here:

The good news is, the developer advocates are listening. I really appreciate that. The bad news is, it’s getting late…

I sincerely hope that ST can bring more engineering assets online fast enough to make a difference before “midnight”.

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Not that the rest of this isn’t interesting (it is), but do you have a timestamp for where @pstuart made his comments?

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While not disparaging Rule Machine; I’m pretty certain that SmartTiles has a significantly higher number of users. Of course, the two apps are in completely different categories, so it’s not a competition. And Rule Machine reached its level of popularity very quickly! … and the iteration rate for features was also incredible!

I just bring this up for general context and accuracy. SmartTiles maintains basic usage data (anonymized, non-traceable to SmartThings Accounts). We know our approximate growth and abandonment rates. I can only estimate RM’s by the GitHub click rate on these Topics.

SmartTiles, meanwhile, is actively working on getting into the “Marketplace”; figured we might as well try to follow the (sub-optimal, but improving…) process that is provided to us.

He made different, awesome points repeatedly and passionately throughout the video. If you open the video in YouTube, you can look for his face in the preview. He’s on at 5:20 to start.

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Thanks. I want to see things get better. Things need to change ASAP.

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THANK YOU!

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Can we close this Topic, then? Please? 4225 posts is plenty… :no_mouth:

Why?, this is epic. What purpose would be served by closing it?

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Agreed.
No one is being FORCED to track this topic.

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Just trying to honor @pstuart’s “period”. Of course I can just mark the Topic “ignore”… but I love knowing what the end of the story is; just like I never walk out of a movie.

@pstuart… Apparently not the end of the story yet… Carry-on folks. Pardon the interruption. :hushed:

The period, end of story refers to this sentence, you may have missed the point…

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That dev call was really depressing to watch. Sorta like, “yeah, sure, let’s hear what you all have to say, but sorry, we’re not gonna change the way we do business around here”. Fwiw, I believe SmartThings is dead as a development platform. I told Bruce and other devs not to waste their time developing for ST because the only reward you’re going to get is endless grief and frustration.

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Ok, so I literally watched the first minute, just the first minute, and already there is a huge problem… I paraphrase here “I want this call to be positive feedback, I understand that some will be negative but I don’t really want to talk to much about that”.

Within the first minute everyone is told that only positive feedback is needed and nobody cares about the negatives…

Umm, what part of this aren’t you guys understanding?

Positive feedback is shown in increased sales and growth.

Negative feedback must be discussed, at length, so that a resolution can be achieved which will turn Thai negative affect into growth and sales.

I think I’ve pretty much heard all I need to hear.

Edit:
I know I have not been here but seven months and I’m not a developer… But I have a clue about what’s going on.

I’ve been saying since shortly after the release on V2 that this company was quickly moving away from the developers and this community. They have been putting on a pony show and that had become blatantly obvious.

The sign was going when the first support member called out rule machine as the problem and recommended the in house apps.

They are raising rings like RM simply because the idea of the hub is going away. They are moving into appliances and are only concerned about small specialized apps.

Just watch and see… By the end of the summer, this forum will be a ghost town and all that st well be concerned about is everything but this community.

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I agree it wasn’t very graceful the way he said it, but what I think he meant to say was something along the lines of “we are looking for constructive criticism, not a bunch of complaints without proposed solutions”

If you watch more than the first minute, you’ll see his meaning in the way he asked questions and listened to ideas.

So, there are lots of issues in that video to take up, but I don’t think that one is one of them.

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